Youth wave lifts Mamdani to NY's top job

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected the youngest mayor of New York in more than a century, becoming the first Muslim and first South Asian in the role.

He based his campaign on a pledge to put working people first and tax the rich to pay for his policies.

Mamdani, a relatively unknown 34-year-old state assemblyman of Indian descent, declared victory against his stalwart opponents: Andrew Cuomo, 67, former governor of New York state who ran as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, 71, founder of the Guardian Angels, a crime patrol group.

The older candidates had painted the millennial from Queens as being too inexperienced to run the United States' largest city, a key financial hub. Cuomo said Mamdani would "kill the city".

The race saw a clear generational and ideological split among voters. Cuomo and Sliwa courted support from older voters, while Mamdani, the front-runner, overwhelmingly appealed to the young.

His supporters were clear why they had voted for him.

"I feel like he had the best interests at heart for working people in New York City," Matthew Maher, 54, from Brooklyn, said after casting his vote. "I liked (his policies) of free buses, free groceries."

Mamdani, a social media-savvy candidate, campaigned on increasing the city's corporate tax rate to pay for his ideas, a rent freeze for 1 million rent-stabilized tenants, free government subsidized grocery stores, and the elimination of city bus fares.

His win came as an ABC News exit poll showed the cost of living was the most important issue among more than half of the electorate.

He also pledged to create a free childcare program for all New York children aged 6 weeks to 5 years.

This year's highly anticipated mayoral race saw a massive voter turnout at the polls, including 735,000 early voters. By Tuesday evening, more than 2 million New Yorkers had voted in the race, more than at any time since 1969, the New York City Board of Elections said.

Voter turnout was higher than the 1.1 million votes cast in the entire 2021 mayoral contest when Democratic incumbent Eric Adams beat Sliwa, the Board of Elections said.

Adams abandoned his reelection campaign in September after facing corruption charges that were later dismissed by a federal judge.

The mayor-elect's win is a beacon of light for Democrats nationally as they have struggled to find a unified voice after their disastrous loss in the last presidential election. It also comes ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Other elections nationwide on Tuesday included governors in New Jersey and Virginia, and a ballot on redrawing congressional maps in California.

Beating the odds

In June's Democratic nomination race, Mamdani beat the odds and defeated Cuomo, a previously popular three-term Democratic governor, who was forced to resign because of a sex scandal in 2021.

Mamdani's campaign won praise and a phone call from former president Barack Obama. Former president Bill Clinton also heaped praise on him, but both stopped short of endorsing him.

However, he was criticized by President Donald Trump, who publicly backed Cuomo on the eve of the election.

"Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!"

Mamdani's energetic campaign, run by an army of young people, utilized social media to create viral videos of him meeting the public, dancing at late-night parties and sitting in the cheap seats at a New York Knicks basketball game.

Elizabeth Adams, 37, from New York, said she voted for Mamdani because it was "time for a change".

"We're facing really scary attacks by the federal government and we need a mayor who's going to stand up and fight for New Yorkers, and it's time to have a more affordable New York City," she said.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1991, Mamdani moved to New York with his family aged 7. He was naturalized as a US citizen in 2018 and still has Ugandan citizenship. He became a New York assemblyman in 2021.

He will be the youngest mayor to run City Hall in generations and only the second Democratic socialist.